Give us the option to pay more (say $12 per month) instead of $10, and have the extra money pooled directly for advertising costs of the game on initiatives like the PA promo.

I'm sick and tired of hearing people tell me I should be out there actively promoting the game in my community. I'm sorry, but it's crap. The most effective method to reach new players is on the internet not in my stupid local community of windows fanboys, mac hipsters and minecraft tragics.

I'm not going to make up flyers to post at my local community institution, but I will happily commit an extra few bucks a month along with my subscription if it goes directly towards marketing the game, and I bet we can find at least a 50 members of the community that will also. That's an extra $100USD per month that you could put towards google adwords or whatever promotion to market the game.

What do you have to lose?!?!

Oh and you can give people a badge for doing so (hehehe.. ninja microtransaction injection)

+1

I for one would gladly pay more if the extra money went directly to advertising VO.

I gues it would be better to do a one-time promotion, fund raising campaign. I support anyway, but made annual subs, still long time to go, then it is harder as monthly pay. So, instead we could purchase Marketing Bonds, ensuring those funds goes to marketing, and replies from devs on where money was spent...
(maybe provisind a useless badge in-game).

But I think Inc is too strict on his business model to swallow it...

@Alloh

We had the 1 time promotion on PA, it came, it went. I haven't really felt a noticeable increase in gameplay on VO. The devs will have the stats to confirm whether this was a worthwhile activity, but consistent marketing is required in ANY business.

I guess if you guys want to support the devs by paying more for your sub, you can do a recurring monthly $10 subscription instead of opting for the discounted longer segments.

Not quite, because we want them to commit to doing more marketing also, that is one important distinction between this suggestion and simply telling everyone to pay more dough, but you are correct to point it out.

Personally I pay for longer periods at a time, because having a monthly payment feels like I have to re-evaluate my commitment to the game every month.

I just dislike the bookkeeping that comes with frequent payments.

"The difference between marketing and culture is the same as between masturbation and onanism."

I am not opposed to a $2 optional marketing option

Also, I have never used the discounted payments for similar reasons.

Keep in mind the marketing guy is also the designer, mission creator, temporary graphics guy, business guy, etc. Lack of money for marketing is one problem, but this doesn't necessarily solve the lack of time to go around, unless you really do want Incarnate to spend less time doing non-marketing things.

Oddly enough the lack of player base is why Incarnate has to work at so many different things. A decisive increase in the player base would allow Guild to hire additional people and so on.

If Incarnate is in fact willing to dedicate the extra funds to web based advertisements then I think it is a good idea. I would rather see him burn up a few months doing nothing but ad work and see a net increase in the player base that would lead to a increase in staffing for him....

What makes any of you think VO's present state is such that increased 'first look' traffic will have any meaningful correlation to increased long-term revenue?

The fact that it actually has any players at all, lector. But a fair point

My assumption was that they were going to wait until around 1.9 or 2.0 before shifting focus toward advertisement, for basically the reason Dr. Lector stated. If some of the more glaring deficiencies are corrected first, the effectiveness of marketing will be amplified.

Whether waiting is worth it depends on how effective the marking would be as-is, how much more effective it could be, how much it would cost, and how long it will take to complete those changes. None of those are questions I have the information required to answer.

The obvious trap that needs to be avoided is always thinking, "We're not finished enough yet, but we'll do it someday."

Give us the option to pay more (say $12 per month) instead of $10, and have the extra money pooled directly for advertising costs of the game on initiatives like the PA promo.

I'm sick and tired of hearing people tell me I should be out there actively promoting the game in my community. I'm sorry, but it's crap. The most effective method to reach new players is on the internet not in my stupid local community of windows fanboys, mac hipsters and minecraft tragics.

I'm not going to make up flyers to post at my local community institution, but I will happily commit an extra few bucks a month along with my subscription if it goes directly towards marketing the game, and I bet we can find at least a 50 members of the community that will also. That's an extra $100USD per month that you could put towards google adwords or whatever promotion to market the game.

What do you have to lose?!?!


----------------------------------------------------------------------------

I used the tag and how do you end the tag to make the text normal again ?
Well anyhow, I like it what can I say.

Although I monthly and not reoccurring. I like the fact that you posted about re-evaluating it every month and you are against that but I like that feature to decide to play or not to play that month.

Look this is not complicated advertising is what gets people to the game

God I wish I could explain this to people. Even the crappiest of products and services will sell. Does everyone like it NO, will there be enough that do ? YES.

So you have to get the game in front of people or NO ONE will ever try it.
It just doesn't happen on it's own you have to make it happen.

Player based referrals will not be enough plain and simple.

These guy may know about programming and making games but there is a real lack of knowledge about marketing I highly urge them to consider outsourcing this on commission.

If they don't have the time or the funds this is exactly what companies need to do to expand. OUTSOURCE the things you don't want to do yourself or can't do.

I don't ship my own packages thats silly I get UPS to do it.
I don't make my own boxes I buy them from someone who does.
I don't make tape for crying out loud I buy it from someone who gets bulk discounts and better pricing then I could ever get and I buy from them.

This is not complicated, but as I mentioned in other posts selecting the method of getting the product to market is important and also based on time, abilities of the company and budget.

One method that handles growth without having to deal with the budget issues is offering incentive if budget is a problem or not this works well and handles expansion.
The reason is because whether you have a huge advertising budget or not it makes no difference because why put out advertising money in advance without knowing if it will produce a profit or new customer. Expansion is best at lower cost and higher probability at least most of the time.

Perhaps existing players would not see the need in this or use of this but others would and definitely do.

I like the idea of a advertising coop plan or $12 per month for coop but that also sort of defeats the purpose. The company needs growth on it's own unless they just want to raise the price.

YES I want more players to play and don't have a problem referring others if I see anyone or get around to it but it's just not that important to most people.

You would be amazed at how well incentive based advertising works.

10 referrals who subscribe for at least one month gets you a free month. Or something like that.

Some will not have interest in this while others will love it and focus should be not on the player base but those who never tried the game before.

Well thats all I know, all bugs considered I think it's still ready for advertising. Look at half the facebook games out there that are very glitchy and bunch of people playing em no one cares except the super users but the casual player might not even notice much of it.

However, those games are mostly free and of course ad based in themselves so although effective that is their way of advertising.

On one hand that might even be good to get advertisers sponsor space to be posted in game as player base increases cost of exposure could increase as well.

WOW there is just so many way to do this. I wish I owned the game. I'm not a professional advertiser but feel confident from experience that 1000's of people should be playing this thing.

Go public perhaps even ? Sell stocks raise money get a million people playing this crazy game LOL

Well maybe thats a bit much but anyhow the ideas have already been done and are out there.

blog blog blog....

Hahaha, you broke the forum by not closing your tag. For every [ i ] there must be a [ / i ] to close it. Normally forums are smart enough to notice when people forget and automatically close it at the end of the post, but the devs' homebrew forum isn't very smart, and just lets it spill over into the rest of the thread. We've told them about this a dozen times and they keep neglecting to fix it. Oh well.

I included some extra closing tags in my post to stop it from continuing all the way down the page.

For more information on tags: http://www.vendetta-online.com/x/msgboard/1/23805

I'm not against the idea of payment options that allow people to contribute to marketing. I think it's very cool that people would like to contribute to this kind of thing.

I'm not going to do some kind of complex bond thing where I have to publish all of my expenditures and justify them (not because I'm hiding our coke+stripper habits; but aside from public report stuff being a big pain in the ass, it wouldn't be allowed by most of the advertisers, who negotiate per-client rates that are confidential).

But, just adding a general option to contribute more in exchange for a "Supportive Player!" badge or some such, would be fine. And you'll just have to trust that I'll exercise good judgement in using the funds. I know some of you have multiple paid accounts, mainly or in part just to support us, and we've always appreciated that.

Like slime says, it isn't all a money issue, part of it is the distribution of (my) time and resources, and lack thereof. Kind of a chicken/egg problem, not enough time to make the people come in who generate more revenue who let me hire more people who then give me enough time.

Lector is correct in that our conversion rate will be reduced by current game issues, and further polish would improve that rate. But, we do still have an existing conversion rate, meaning that more exposure will create more paying customers. Regardless of whether one's conversion rate is good or poor, some will always convert. Unfortunately, that also means the potential loss of those who form an opinion based on one stage of the game, and then are unwilling to re-visit the game later. So there's a bit of a double-edged sword in advertising when the game still has some bigger issues.

I am holding off a little bit on bigger marketing pushes, to try and get some game improvements in there. But at the same time, I'm doing things like the Penny Arcade event to learn a bit more about what kind of influxes we do get, and how well they work, and so on. This is a back-end (server) scalability issue as well.

We are working on a number of options though, including an external marketing agency and some other possibilities. As a historical note for newer people: it isn't that we have some problem with advertising our game or outsourcing our marketing, it's that we've had no money for many years. Our publisher went into bankruptcy when they shipped our title, we exhausted all our own funds on development, etc etc. Anyway, our situation has improved in the last year, and now we're working on how to best approach our particular set of challenges.

But, just adding a general option to contribute more in exchange for a "Supportive Player!" badge or some such, would be fine.

List of things TheRedSpy will pay for (so far):

Shields.
Blue Neutron Blaster shots.
Muffins.
The ability to make LENBS.
Footballprophet Fan Club T-shirt and Hat.
Sunflares with red explosions.

As I have said before, a micro-transaction based business model would work for VO, but don't feel like you can't start inserting these elements now. This is a very basic step but if you implement it you will get an idea of the viability of micro-transactions as a supplementary revenue stream for VO.

I'd pay for a custom paint job that had - I'm gonna get revenge, ONE DAY! - written in big red letters on the side of my ship.

Thinking about it, there's loads of customisation's I wouldn't mind buying. Not sure how it would work exactly but maybe you could purchase credits from the VO web site that could be used in-game at the local space station shop.